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Tema: Forøgelse aF den organisaToriske ydeevne

leading the human energy . . .

Bernd Vogel Director Henley Centre for Engaging Leadership, Associate Professor of Leadership and Organisational Behaviour, Henley Business School, University of Reading og Tommy Olofsen Managing Director OSM Crew Management Ltd., OSM Maritime Group

Performance is one of the enigmatic concepts for organisations but also for leadership thinking and practice. While businesses can leverage per-formance with financial engineering, still at the heart of organisations people are accomplishing the pro-cesses, products and services that build long-term success.

Not surprisingly, in Henley Business School’s 5th Annual Henley Corpo-rate Learning Priorities Survey 20141 we found that 83 % of executives indicated that to “maintain and build employee engagement” will be the single most important people ma-nagement objective.

One way of creating insights for practice is to look at the energy of organisations. Our research and practice on leading the energy of

organisations, departments or teams for positive impact focuses on the collective human factor and what leadership can do about it2. Human energy is by far not the only factor for performance, but one that managers at all levels of an organisations can address. That makes it so powerful.

How organisations capture their collective energy as a source for human perfor-manceWhile engagement practices focus on the engagement of individuals, we pursue an integrative look at the energy of teams or entire orga-nisation. Then you learn if people collectively share the passion, for-ward thinking and the effort needed for performance. The reason? Most of todays’ work has to be done in teams, across business units, or in

projects. Understanding the human energy that drives performance ne-eds to follow those collaborations because working together for shared outcomes can show in positively hu-man dynamics – or negatively!

When organizations such as Ella’s Kitchen or TORM focus on increa-sing and sustaining performance they look at the passion, cognitive agility and shared effort of all people in the organization. We, thus, focus on the idea of collective energy – the soft factor that lies at the core of a company’s processes, services, and products. Organisational energy is the extent to which an organisation has mobilised its emotional, cogni-tive, and behavioural potential to pur-sue its goals3.

Leading the human energy in your organisation

– a driver for performance

Henley Business School

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Tema: Forøgelse aF den organisaToriske ydeevne

leading the human energy . . .

It is crucial to understand the diver-sity of how human energy can show in organisations and how this may impact key outcomes. Your organi-sations can experience four different energy states. The “energy matrix” (Bruch & Vogel, 2011) (see Figure 1) is built along the intensity of ener-gy – the degree to which a company has activated its emotional, cognitive, and behavioural potential for transfor-ming the business – and the quality of organisational energy – the extent to which the human forces are con-structively aligned with the shared overall company goals – or not!

• Productive energy (high positive energy): Characterised by high emotional

involvement, mental alertness, high activity levels, stamina, and produ ctivity for shared goals.

When productive energy is balan-ced with comfortable energy and periods of regeneration for the or-ganisation, this is the source of de-livery, innovation and success.

• Comfortable energy (low positive energy): Characterised by high satisfaction

and identification, coupled with lo-wer activity levels and pace to do the business.

Comfortable energy is crucial to re-charge the batteries of a business when going hand in hand with pro-ductive energy. When comfortable becomes dominant it might hamper ideas, agility, and over time perfor-mance despite current success.

• Resigned inertia (low negative energy): Characterised by high levels of

frustration, mental withdrawal, de-tachment, and low collective enga-gement for transforming the organi-sation.

• Corrosive energy (high negative energy): Characterised by collective ag-

gression, destructive thinking and behaviour with high levels of anger, politics, intentions to weaken other unit in favour of own unit interests.

This energy state undermines col-laborating and trusting and thus undermines performance across boundaries. We also found that toxic organisations struggle to col-

lectively pursue visions and oppor-tunities that define the performance of the future!

How about your organisations?Which energy states dominate the experience in your organiza-tion, department, team, or cross-unit project? It can also be helpful to distinguish the human factor by hierarchical levels. Is your organisa-tion highly excited, vision driven at the top while disenfranchised at the frontline services or amongst middle managers? Is the top team showing signs of corrosion that start to trickle down though your organisation?

You can systematically assess your organisation’s energy profile—for instance with the Organisational Energy Questionnaire (OEQ) (see Bruch & Vogel, 2011) as part of your employee opinion survey or in workshops. The OEQ produces Energy Profiles that show to what extent your people are collectively energized for your departments’ or organizations’ goals and thus as-sess a crucial precursor for perfor-mance in your business.

1) Henley Corporate Learning Survey 2014 (http://henley.ac.uk/news/news-item/henley-corporate-learning-survey-2014/). Responses from 359 executives, from 38 countries, and more than two thirds of respondents at director or CEO level.

2) The author conducted research with Heike Bruch, professor at the University of St. Gallen, on organiza-tional energy for over ten years at the Henley Business School and earlier at the University of St. Gallen.

3) Bruch, H & Vogel, B (2011) Fully Charged: How Great Leaders Boost Their Organization's Energy and Ignite High Performance. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.

INTENSITY

QUALITY

High

Low

Negative Positive

CorrosiveEnergy

ResignedEnergy

ProductiveEnergy

ComfortableEnergy

Bernd Vogel, Director Henley Centre for Engaging Leadership,Associate Profes-sor of Leadership and Organisational Behaviour, Henley Business School, Univer-sity of ReadingThe Energy Matrix and the four states of

collective energy (Bruch & Vogel, 2011)

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leading the human energy . . .

Let’s learn from TORM

TORM is one of the world’s lea-ding Product Tanker Shipping Companies with headquarters in Copenhagen and currently opera-ting worldwide some 65 vessels. In the second half 2013, TORM with support of the Henley Centre for Engaging Leadership undertook a study that looked at how TORM’s current level of performance could be further improved by targeting specific empowerment and organi-sational energy initiatives. The aim was to acquire insights that could shape best practices for developing both a highly engaged workforce and enhanced vessel performance including safety, quality and com-mercialisation.

Thinking about empowerment: The results showed that TORM lea-ders experience high levels of empo-werment despite not all supporting

factors seen as in place. Further lin-king each individual vessel’s objecti-ve KPI’s against empowerment sco-res showed that those vessels with the highest levels of empowerment were also the best performing ves-sels according to objective KPI’s.

Focus on collective energy on board: The study further assessed with the OEQ the current levels of shared energy for the on-board leadership teams across the 65 TORM ves-

sels. The results provided energy profiles and, thus, management in-formation for each vessel according to their level of productive energy, comfortable energy, resigned iner-tia and corrosive energy. That data also showed that the organisational energy states were closely related to the performance of the vessels.

Particularly, it seems on those ves-sels where the management team on board, the Captain, First officer,

Tommy Olofsen, Managing Director OSM Crew Management Ltd.,

OSM Maritime Group

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Tema: Forøgelse aF den organisaToriske ydeevne

leading the human energy . . .

First engineer, etc., experienced high productive energy the study also found higher vessel performan-ce with regard to KPI’s. This sug-gested that if TORM invest in this specific area on board it may open an opportunity to achieve high per-formance returns.

In addition to high scores on produ-ctive energy levels, an almost even score existed for the levels of com-fortable energy with the on-board leadership teams. This may balance some of the strain from the experi-ence of an ongoing high energy env-ironment. At the same for TORM this indicated that mobilising and main-taining energy remain a key chal-lenge to the company for ongoing outstanding performance.

Strategic conclusions for practice at TORM: Leveraging HR measures for structural empowerment at TORM. Many are already under-going implementation and initial evidence reveals a positive im-pact on an increased performan-ce level across TORM.

Implementing overall people stra-tegies with a focus on mobilising people energy around existing threats and negative challenges to the business or exceptional op-portunities for TORM (depicted below as Slaying the Dragon or Winning the Princess strategies by Bruch & Vogel (2011).

Specific operational initiatives at TORM for both strategies: Weekly vessel wide communica-tion addressing the threats and issues facing TORM, including operational and commercial chal-lenges. Thus fully transparent communication creates on the vessel organisation an awareness of the threats but equally an un-derstanding of the response stra-tegies and instruments in place to deal with them.

From the TORM example we can pick up the challenge how ma-nagers at all levels in an organisation can help to mobilise and sustain energy for performance:

1. Leadership from within and from the top. In large orga-nisations to involve all people inspiration needs to stem from your line managers, such as the vessel management on board miles away from headquarters. Thus leadership that energizes needs to stem from people across the organization and from the top. Both perspectives together are important. Do you have outstanding leadership capability across

the organisation?

2. The overall leadership focus of the organisation. What is the overall mobilising focus for your business that employees deeply identify with short and longer term? We are working with two leadership foci for organi-zations. To find out what drives the human energy in your organisation reflect on two questions:• Are your organisations or your departments up against

major threat (‘Slaying the Dragon’ strategy) • Do your organisations or your departments pursue an

inspiring opportunities and future outlook (‘Winning the Princess’ strategy) (Bruch & Vogel, 2011)?

Consider Ella’s Kitchen, an organic baby food producer from Henley-on-Thames, United Kingdom. “Our mission is to develop healthy eating habits that last a lifetime by offering a range of tasty, natural and healthy 100% organic foods for babies and kids ...”

What is your organisation’s overall mobilising focus that drives performance? And what is the narrative around this we could learn from everyone in your organisation?

Leadership sourcesthat mobilize and sustain energy for performing organizations

Identifying, interpreting and de-fining a vision/opportunity. This has been achieved through rein-forced communication of the new and cohesive OneTORM strategy that outlines the opportunity that exists by changing the way the TORM organisation works.

Initiating a Performance Leader-Ship program with a focus on performance reporting, identifying best practices and organisational wide learning from these.